


Season One of Squiddles! Sing-Along!

by Manastar



Series: Squiddles! Sing-Along! The Epic Poem [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Squiddles, especially monochromatic inkblot, huge thanks to everyone who contributed to the squiddles wiki, this is entirely selfish and for me exclusively
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23908210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manastar/pseuds/Manastar
Summary: I'm telling this story for myself and no others. Once upon a time there were little creatures called squiddles, and at the end of their story they were all dead or wished that they were. You know that one poem that goes, 'I want us to both eat well', this isn't me saying that, this is me demanding that I eat well. Everything hurts and I want to tell this story in a terrible manner.
Series: Squiddles! Sing-Along! The Epic Poem [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1723339
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Romeo Shot Juliet The Prick

**Author's Note:**

> Read end notes of you want to know the story behind all of this. Sorry folks this is for me exclusively.

###  Romeo Shot Juliet The Prick 

This is entirely selfish folks i'm sorry to tell you. I don’t know my own name but i know that. So I guess i gotta start somewhere so i’m gonna start with squiddles. It’s all based on the old wiki and the whole journalism story involved with that and the other person who was active for a few days and revolutionized it and then vanished but that’s not all right or important or anything i give a shit about to be frank. So I guess what I mean to say is that i’ writing this story for me and I know others could do it better or that canon will destroy it within a couple of updates considering Dirk’s weird blue goo dude with tentacles.

So i’m gonna tell you all the things that happened to the squiddles and how they became horrorterrors, because i know what happened and I need to get it out there. It’ll be outta order though because to be quite honest i don’t give a fuck about them making sense. I want to tell you about the bits that matter to me. So let’s go about this in the traditional fashion.  


Once upon a time there was tiny little creatures called squiddles that lived in the ocean blue and grey and green, they lived everywhere in the ocean, From deep trenches that they filled with bright even without light to the arctic seas where narwhals roamed that were older than the sky, from coral reefs inhabitants neck and fin shoulder to dorsal, anywhere there was saltwater there was squiddles. That used to be how it was anyway.  


Once upon a time there was tiny little creatures called squiddles that had tentacles and best friends and love in their hearts and memories in their heads. They lived with their friends and their families and their friends that were basically family. They baked bread over deep sea vents and grew seaweed in their windowsills and made their houses out of bright blue coral. It’s considered lucky if you’re a construction worker and you’re blue.  


Each group of squiddles, called a tangle, had beliefs and unique culture. Handicraft and memory surviving through the craft of tentacle and sucker, so when they all started dying, when so many of them started dying, they call it the great Forgetting, actually they didn’t call it that but I do so there. Whenever people are living through grand things they don’t give them names like that, ones that imply this is the last death of your species.  


Now you probably want to know why they’re dying. It’s not an easy answer but what I’ve got for you is just kinda shitty. I could tell you how their water is getting hotter and killing all their coral. I could tell you about how the water is getting more turbulent and hurricanes are getting worse. I could tell you about the miles of trash and the microplastic filling hatchlings’ gills till they are smothered in color. But that isn’t the part of their deaths I want to tell you about because to be quite frank, it is the boring part, the unfixable part, the one that they were saved from by dying early.  


Skipper Plumbthroat was a barrel chested man with a corncob pipe and an addiction to eating on a consistent basis. He looked like Captain Haddock from Rin Tin Tin and like Young Sick Bacchus by Michelangelo. He had ribs that were hung like crystal chandeliers in phantom of the opera, always willing to fall if you convinced them with the proper boot or hand. So if he had access to the internet and knowledge of how anything electric worked ever, he would describe himself as fugly, but really he was a little plain and a little strange.  


He had been a poet in his youth. Grown up dockside and dreaming of universities as even his calluses grew calluses. So isn’t it funny how when he went so far into debt and was disowned by his only family, just for a chance at it. It turned out he hated it, he flunked and found himself at the bottom of the bottle at the bar by the docks where he was born because it doubles as a hospital every third Thursday. Now I don’t know about you, but the feeling of being a cog, of being a worker, of going and doing the same thing your father did till you die an unsatisfied death, didn’t set right with me and it didn’t set right with him. But freedom needs money and to grow wealthy you need something to sell.  


Now let me tell you about the squiddles, and how they were magic. Let me tell you about how they had the power to heal sickness, to grow plants beyond your wildest imaginings, how they had a song and a spirit. Let me tell you about how, when Plumbthroat remembered the old stories, about vitality and power, it was as if a fortune unraveled itself beneath his hands on the old pockmarked surface of the wooden bar.  


How he went to sea in a boat with just him and how when he dragged his next again and again, getting catch after catch, how he stayed long after every other boat was off of the water. How when he finally pulled her out of the water he cheered and danced and swayed. How he cried and hollered like a babe in the spring air stung by a wasp for a first time. How he was crying, joyful so thankful, so close to being free, until he heard her crying too.  


Her name was Ortygia and she was so very scared. She’d gotten separated from her tangle and had risen in that net like aphrodite pulled by her hair from the sea. She collected fossils and ancient pieces of metal and stone from the sea floor which she repaired and then sold with all the information she could find on it. Her dream was to work in a museum but you need somewhere permanent to have that kind of job.  


And even with everything that happened after, it speaks to the humanity in him, that Plumbthroat on hearing the cries lunged for the net like a man on fire giving a hug to the one that set him on fire. He untangled her and they just stared at each other for a moment, he stuttered out an apology and she daintily accepted. And they just kinda sat there stunned, staring, her cupped in her hands. She was the color a horizon turns at the end of a night shift when you get off and can finally go to sleep, the curve of the world brightening the last thing you see before going below deck.  


I could tell you how they grew to love each other as best friends do, how she slept in an old diving helmet beside his berth as she recovered. How she made him laugh and how he taught her card games. The constellations they named and how her favorite was the hunter and how his favorite was the ‘one that carried that water jug thing, names a bitch to rhyme’ and how that made her laugh and almost fall into the sea because at her giggle he had been offended and that offended look had almost made her laugh so hard that she was doing a barrel roll right over the railing and into the foam. But i don’t know if you care about that, so let’s skip the end shall we.  


How she couldn’t live on land forever, even if a ship wasn’t really land. And he couldn’t go with her unless it was for a short sad visit that ended up with a floating corpse. How she told him he was leaving and how he was bitter and how he hid it behind a smile and how he let her go with a wave and how she left thinking they were the best of friends still and how he was kicking himself for not getting a tank as if that was the problem.  


Years later he would learn that squiddles die if kept in tanks for longer than a few weeks and he wouldn’t connect the dots. Let’s talk about how he saw her next with a beautiful baby in her wake and how he felt so betrayed. How he had a harpoon gun and how easy it was to put pressure on the trigger when he was angry. How squiddles are so small that a harpoon through one basically makes them explode, no not explode, pop like a water balloon full of blood and bone. How she screamed and her son sunk into the depths.  


Her son named Plumthroat, because even if you’re best friends some things don’t come up like how you spell your name properly or what brought you out onto the sea at such odd hours in the first place. Why you were pulling your net through this area at this time and all that. And Plumthroat watched his mother die in agony as she was dragged back to the ship and Plumbthroat got no answers cause she was DOA but got a nice fat paycheck.  


I suppose none of that matters and I’m dancing around the bush. But Plumbthroat got a taste of money and Plumthroat got a taste of death and both of them had very strong feelings about their respective life changing events. So let me tell you the story from a different beginning. One that will lead somewhere better we hope.


	2. Be my Otter Half?

Do you know what it is like to grow up in a world that is dying but refuses to go out quick. And not dying as in meteors falling to the planet, that would be too easy. The dread and the puke, let me tell you about growing up in a world where so many are dying and every single system that was supposed to help anyone has rotted and decayed to the point where it is infecting everything with a death, but not a nice death. A world that is dying as in changing, as in everything that came before has worn off like a statue turned gold from the touch of a person over and over again. 

Let me try again, i want to tell you about a pile of people that were not working, how everything was tired. When the entire world is falling apart and how originally it served a purpose but now it’s a beached porpoise. There is nothing to be done and it’s slowly slumbering hunkering to a stop, a three legged bar stool slow-dancing with the jukebox that keeps tripping over it’s own wires. I wanna talk about how it feels to inherit that.  


Once upon a time there was a story and it was real. Once upon a time there was a story and it was merely words which is to say, I needed to write it anyway or else i would die from it. From the lack of it at my fingertips. I’m a poet I’m not supposed to write stories but i did anyway. Like constellations in a shoebox given away for free because no one would pay for them, muddy stars.  


It was a story about a little squiddle named Plumthroat, a magical Princess named Berryboo and the friends they made along the way that mostly died.  
Now, Plumthroat was an orphan, like all stories made for children start because no good adult figure would let their children get involved and forced into situations like typical adventures. It absolves any one of the responsibility of caring for them because according to most media it’s not anyone’s job to take care of children if their parents don’t. HE grew up mixing two of anything that could fit in a container just to see what would happen, an alchemist.  


He was raised the way many other children are raised, in the dirt by other children.  


But by one child in particular. You know how older sisters typically raise their younger family members because they feel pressured by society to do so and also because otherwise the family members wouldn’t get raised at all? It was like that but for orphans. There isn’t anything like orphanages for squiddles, no group homes or family care-takers or innkeeper you pay in little grubby orphan work. Her name was Creamsicle and she was the best sister any squiddle had ever had, at least according to Plumthroat.  


She was smart and funny and braver than a sealion. He found her. Always tagging along in her footsteps saying, “Hey, listen, hey! Pay attention to me!”. When you’re nobody’s, it’s like you’re invisible, no one to care for you or worry. When you are crying in the street, always somebody else’s problem, always, “Surely someone else will handle it” and then no one does. But she saw him and when he tagged along in her footsteps she actually took the time to teach him. Almost by second nature, don’t eat that, it’ll make you sick, don’t go there, sleep here, it’ll be okay, do you know how to read yet.  


She just kinda took him in and never strayed. Labor by someone barely older than him. One day he told her that she was the first person since his mom to ever see him really, and she just looked at him, not saying anything. Creamsicle did not know how to tell Plumthroat that he was the first person to see her ever.

So they lived together and ate together and grew together. Creamsicle deciding to take care of this sprout, getting a job, getting multiple jobs, till she landed a comfortable enough gig cleaning the local library. Her coworkers were nice and on her birthday would make a cake that she would take home so Plumthroat could swear he would only eat a slice and then eat the whole thing in a frantic sugar rush. Plumthroat meanwhile went to school, and got into trouble, and went to a different school, and got into trouble again, and then went to a third last ditch school and got in trouble again, before settling on being 'self-taught'. 

Creamsicle didn't mind that either except for when she really did, but at the same time she didn't like establishment that much. Imagine a twelve ounce yellow ball of sunshine that regularly cries over dead daisies saying ACAB in a voice like a squeaky toy. Black lives matter and the smothering of information on the way cops kill people is criminal and must be stopped at all costs. Anyway back to the story. Creamsicle knew she could support both of them and supported her brother's frivolous hobbies, not understanding that this was a serious passion for Plumthroat. Not like the skate surfing he picked up for two weeks and then never picked up again. 

Plumthroat meanwhile neglected to inform his lovely sister that homegrown alchemists either failed and died or revolutionized the field without the structure of what must be holding them back. He assumed she already knew, she knew everything after all. And if she didn't, well what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. Ignoring the way that he flooded the house with fumes one or three times.

So I guess what I'm saying is that, that is where our story truly begins, the day of Plumthroat's interview to become the royal alchemist.


	3. Be Fouled Anchor

He was late. He was oh so very late for a very oh so important date. His interview for the position of royal alchemist!!!!! He’d never been so excited and worried in his life. But it wasn’t his fault that he was late, no not even by a little bit. Creamsicle had come home from working Ebb tide shift, greeting dawn from the wrong side. Joke is, she used to be a morning person. And she had come home and an experiment had eaten part of the sink and the house was a mess and she didn’t say anything. She sighed though and said she would take care of it when she woke up. That was worse than a lecture. So he had to clean the house and scrub the kitchen, and now he was a little bit late but that’s okay! He could make it up in the commute. 

He was in such a rush that he didn’t notice the pink squiddle that came and knocked on the door after he left.  
“That’s my kid brother, win or lose I’m right beside him.” and when the figure asked how Creamsicle actually wasn’t that much older than him, Creamsicle answered,   
“It’s not a matter of age, but of bearing. Nothing seems to touch him, who else but kids and crazy folks walk like that.” The pink squiddle said he wasn’t a kid anymore, and then got a door in her face. 

And then he saw that Blimblob was having trouble wheeling his cart into the bakery this fine morning. So of course he stopped to help and with his fine alchemical talents! He accidentally turned part of the street to tar, its okay though! Plumthroat fixed it and helped get Blimblob unstuck and helped him get his cart inside, so really its a net positive.

He was in such a rush that he didn’t notice the pink squiddle that came and knocked on the door after he left.   
“That kid? Never watching where he steps, never watching where he goes, helps where he can though. It’s like weird though because he’s never helping for you, he’s helping to help him” and then just shakes his head and keeps sweeping. 

Of course wherever Blimblob went Kiwimari was sure to follow. Kiwimari wasn’t green in spite of his name, whenever he was asked he said that he and Blimblob switched when he was really young. Kiwimari was exiting the bank where he worked turning sanddollars into loan sharks. Called himself, “The most valuable member of the community!!”, Creamsicle didn’t call him anything at all, she refused to talk about him, said Plumthroat was to make his own maladjusted decisions. He was gonna be late for a super important meeting. And of course Plumthroat swore that he would be able to help. Even though Blimblob did not want his help and was yelling at him to be left alone. A curmudgeonly son of a reef that Kiwimari was. They ended up catapulted up above the reef, and of course Plumthroat sunk them back down again with alchemical magic and got Kiwimari to his meeting but that didn’t stop him from grumbling as he sashayed off. It was okay though, Plumthroat was sure they’d be friends by the next time he came round to collect rent. 

He was in such a rush that he didn’t notice the pink squiddle that came and knocked on the door after he left.   
“I was late because of him of course!!”, Kiwimari didn’t even acknowledge the pink squiddle, until she asked that wasn’t he already talking about being late before Plumthroat even walked up? Kiwimari shushed her and smiled like eel oil at those he was meeting with,   
“Doesn’t really matter, that boy ruined my morning before he was even in it!”

Plumthroat continued on before running into his lawyer friend, Minty Dream. Now, Plumthroat considered himself friends with every Squiddle but Minty Dream, Minty Dream pushed him some days. Annoying and full of questions and ill-timed observations that were almost certainly always wrong. Plumthroat sometimes wanted to push Minty Dream down deep in his heart but not like this! This was an accident he swears on his glubs!! Minty Dream’s papers went everywhere and he had court in ten minutes! But he could fix it, he promises, he had just the potion in his pocket and it may have made all the pages come to life and start eating people but they were all nice and organized he swears. And then he rushed off, forgetting to leave even an apology in his wake. To be honest, he didn’t even really want to apologize and that’s why he forgot.

He was in such a rush that he didn’t notice the pink squiddle that came and knocked on the door after he left. It was a few minutes before the trial but Minty always had time for the truth. He had seen her coming a fathom away.   
“It’s about net positive with him. He’s whip smart and everything he makes does what it says it does, just with a few side effects. My papers are perfectly in order, a few minutes ago they were eating people and now, they are all color coded with relevant citations in the margins, I didn’t do that. Net positive.”

Plumthroat was super mega ultra late now but he had to go, he had to try. He ran into someone but it wasn't anyone important and he was in a rush. No worries now he had to keep moving!

He was in such a rush that he didn’t notice the pink squiddle that came up to Skybloo after he left. Skybloo was crying, big loathsome tears as only Skybloo could cry.   
“With that squid it’s like if there isn’t something to be done he doesn’t care, if it can’t be fixed or broke more, it’s invisible to him, he doesn’t know my name, I’ve lived on his street for years!”

Princess Berryboo arrived at her mother’s feet at the same time that Plumthroat was finishing his speech. Apologizing for his lateness, promising to be the best court alchemist the seven seas had ever seen. Princess Berryboo had been following him just for this purpose. Her mother asked he what she had seen.

“He fixes what he breaks better than it was before but he has to break it first. He doesn’t apologize or help out of kindness, he’s focussed on some goal that only he can see, however, he is a good squid, who doesn’t give up even though he should. I’d recommend him for a different alchemical post just not the royal one.”

She ignored the look of betrayal Plumthroat threw her. She knew it didn’t matter what she would say to Plumthroat or to her mother. He would be offered the job because mommy dearest would take anything with a pulse and he would take it because he didn’t have sense. A net, positive, cast out for anything to catch. Her mother’s eyes were warm as she looked over the both of them, and in that moment she knew that Queen Hestistenia’s thoughts were the same as her own.

Don’t you know I’m trying to save your life.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, you're here. So I got into homestuck real late, like as everyone on my dash was mourning its end and when I did I thought that squiddles was a real cartoon, so I tried to find it on all the traditional pirating sites, couldn't find it. Was like sounds fake but ok. Kept looking for it on and off of the internet, It was driving me crazy.Found the wiki which convinced me all the more that it was real. Apparently it was old and the studio had burnt down so that's why i couldn't find it. I just wanted to watch one episode, was that such a crime. I looked up writers and dug around libraries and newspapers around the time the studio was supposed to have burnt down, I fucking became an investigative journalist for this, eventually i lost my mind and fucking emailed the us copyright people, didn't get an answer, found their website and search engine and finally found out for sure that all of it was fake as shit. It felt like getting shot ngl, homestuck means so much to me, its how i realized I was a dyke, and it felt like losing a connection to it, so i decided to write it myself. But none of it was coming out right, not when I wrote it like an epic poem in iambic pentameter, not when I was writing it like a cartoon, not when I was writing it like a cartoon in iambic pentameter. So quarantine hit and i was an essential worker until i wasnt and so i was like, 'apocalypse=writing equivalent of comfort food', and this all popped out. It might've also been the 50 arizona teas that i got for 50 cents each from the store cause they were having a sale, you know those teas the 99 cent ones that are huge and have no marketing cause they'd prefer to just sell to you, anywho expect more of this nonsense coming out pretty soon because this is my house now and i need to get the whole story out before andrew hussie or aysha or whoever release another set of canon squiddle names because i swear to god I have literally planned and tried to write this for two years and i refuse to have my everything ruined for me because i kept it in my head instead of putting it out there ya'know?


End file.
